Michael Weiss is the Research Director of The Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank, as well as the co-chair of its Russia Studies Centre. A native New Yorker, he has written widely on English and Russian literature, American culture, Soviet history and the Middle East. Follow @michaeldweiss

Despite the horrors of Homs, Syria's rebel leaders are bullish as Assad's regime 'rots from the inside'

The morale of Syria's rebels 'has not been hit by the fall of Baba Amr'

Muhammad Zuka is a Syrian resistance leader in his mid-thirties. Like everyone caught up in the revolution, which turns a year old this week, Muhammed’s former life – he was a small business owner from the north Damascus suburb of Qalamoun – is over, having been traded for that of a fugitive who coordinates the Free Syrian Army’s Popular Resistance Bloc. He’s a “connector”, responsible for liaising between and among the rebel networks of Damascus and its outlying suburbs. It is here that the regime’s elite Republican Guard has been battling an insurgency that, for the last several months, has inched steadily closer to the lion's den – a feat that Libya's National Transitional Council was unable to manage without the help of NATO airpower.

Last night, my friend Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian dissident who runs the immensely informative Syrian Revolution Digest blog, spoke with Muhammad. Two weeks after the fall of Baba Amr, and mere hours after Kofi Annan’s predictably bathetic diplomatic mission to Syria ended in failure – 150 more people were killed at the weekend, 61 of them civilians, and a horrific massacre involving rape and burning people alive has allegedly taken place in Karm el-Zaytoun, Homs - I wanted Muhammad’s assessment of all the big questions: Where is this revolution now headed? Does he believe in a negotiated settlement? How weak or strong is the regime? And what does he want, much less expect, from the West?

I’d been depressed about Syria for weeks, so I stupidly thought a revolutionary would be too. “Our morale has not decreased since the fall of Baba Amr,” Muhammed said baldly. But surely that was a setback for the Free Syrian Army? “No, because Assad’s soldiers were not able to move in and take over even this single neighbourhood until they used human shields and mercenaries and heavy artillery and tanks – everything at their disposal. We had to withdraw after we knew we’d be firing on human shields and after our ammunition ran out. Baba Amr showed the regime’s cowardice, which gave us more confidence to fight back.”

And where does that ammunition come from, exactly? Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have all, at one point or another, been fingered as gun-running countries even though the rebels’ materiel is still unsophisticated: Kalashnikovs, RPGs, a few sniper rifles and homemade IEDs. No one is underwriting the revolution, Muhammed insisted, except the regime itself. “We buy our munitions from active officers in the Syrian army, men who are loyal to the regime but more loyal to making money. Some of these officers eventually defect but the majority are still there.” The prices are high and the supplies are low but rebels have other means. “Occasionally, collaborators on the inside allow us to raid weapons depots.”

I’d heard this a lot: consignments of weapons coming in from Lebanon are in the tens per day, not the hundreds or thousands. At certain FSA checkpoints, mukhbarat agents or local policemen are known to consort with the rebels, offering them water, feeding them intelligence as to the army’s operational activities or, sometimes, replenishing their bullets. No doubt some of these contacts are meant to sew misinformation or perform reconnaissance for the regime but there is no denying that the cooperation between both sides hints at Assad’s terminal weakness: the entire edifice of the state is saturated with sympathisers, informers and turncoats-in-waiting. “The regime is rotting from the inside,” as Muhammed put it, not bothering to add the recent defections of more army generals and a deputy oil minister.

He also told me that there’s a growing disillusionment on the ground with designated opposition figures, be they foreign or domestic. I mentioned a few names that Annan had visited with in his delegation. Muhammed described them as “just another face of the regime,” people who were incapable of starting the revolution themselves yet have arrogated to themselves the role of arbiters of its fate. He was equally unkind about the semi-recognised, Istanbul-based Syrian National Council, which he said was meant to be a tribune for the street but instead became a vanity project for exiles.

“No one represents us.” Well, then why not draft your own platform or petition to better convey to the West and to Arab countries what it is that you really want? Muhammed said gathering a thousand signatures under current conditions isn’t easy but it's also unnecessary. “You want a petition? Every day is a petition – look at our banners and pictures. We named four Fridays in a row ‘Foreign Intervention Friday.’ After that it was ‘The FSA Protects Us Friday’, then ‘No Fly-Zone Friday.’ Last week was ‘Arm the FSA Friday.’ How much clearer can we be?”

The rebels aren't interested in providing Assad – “Hitler-cum-Dracula”, as Muhammed calls him – with an exit strategy. They want the dictator and his inner circle to be put on trial, not set up in a villa in Spain or Russia. “Negotiations aren’t possible. We are going to fight to victory or to death.”

I mentioned that foreign intervention seems a perennial topic of debate abroad but one that, for the time being anyway, shows little chance of being enacted. Did he agree with Sen John McCain’s call for the United States to wage an aerial assault on key military targets in Syria? “If the US wants to bomb the Fourth Division, then great! But there is now an understanding that the international community is not serious. Turkey has been blowing hot air about a buffer zone for months. Why should we wait for the Arab League or this or that country to veto something at the UN?”

Muhammed gave me a raft of requests, beginning, he said, with the “lowest common denominator” – the ones that all revolutionaries agree are both desired and feasible. Safe zones and a no-fly zone are desired but no one believes they'll happen. What can be done is the mass expulsion of Syria’s ambassadors from Western capitals since their continued presence lends legitimacy to a regime that, by international consensus, is illegitimate. Also, the West should arm the rebels.

“Why should foreign intervention be wrong when people demand it?” Muhammed asked. “Russia, Iran, Hezbollah all support the regime. That’s a form of intervention, isn’t it? We are not fighting just the regime, we are fighting foreign states that stand behind it. So make this an equal battle for us. We can take care of ourselves.”